Polly, a young tavern wench, lives in a backwards country that worships the god Nuggan, that makes new abominations every week. Abominations unto Nuggan that are commited are punishable by death. This has some side affects, mainly that the list of abominations has started to grow weirder and weirder, for instance, the colour blue is an abomination.

Polly starts the book off by escaping from home to join the army (of course an abomination), and look for her older brother, Paul, who never returned. However, joining the army is harder than cutting your hair and talking low. It also involves walking like a guy, talking like a guy, and acting like a guy. And also, most important she finds out, socks (I'll let you figure that one out for yourself...).

Signing up for the army turns out to be easier than she thought, and soon she finds herself on the way to the front lines with an Igor, a troll, a coffee loving vampire, and other guys.

But hers is no ordinary regiment. It turns out that she and her collegues are the final regiment going to fight for her backwards country. They have the worst supllies, and the enemy is hunting them down. To top it all off, their corporal, or "rupert", is short of all of his bricks, as it were. The only thing that saves these recruits form dying early on, and ruining the rest of the book, is Seargent Jackrum, described as follows. "The word 'fat' could not honestly be applied to him, not when the word 'gross' was lumbering forward to catch your attention." This puts as slightly less obese than the other members of NAO.

 

This an excellent story, and quite humourous to boot. I would however, not suggest reading this book first, as it involves some characters from other books. Overall, a marvelous book, I would encourage everyone and anyone to read it.

 

Look for other Terry Pratchett reviews coming soon (or some time... probably)-SWNerd.